‘Liberal media’ is a big myth
It’s time to dispel the myth of liberal media.
In a letter published on Aug. 12, there was an attempt to link the media and certain billionaires with an anti-Trump bias.
For every example given of a progressive/liberal bias, it’s easy to find a conservative example to offset it.
We have the Koch brothers underwriting conservative causes in the media, and Sheldon Adelson, Peter Thiel and Carl Icahn to name a few billionaires. Rupert Murdoch is well-known and prominent.
Phillip Anschultz is owner of the conservative San Francisco Examiner and the Washington Examiner as well as newspapers in 60 other cities across the country. Sinclair Broadcasting, owned by the Smith brothers, own 193 local TV stations reaching 40 percent of U.S. homes. The New York Post, owned by Murdoch, balances out the perceived bias of The New York Times, as does the Washington Examiner balance out the Washington Post. And it’s not necessary to point out FOX , but I will, a virtual mouthpiece for President Donald Trump.
Happily, The Beaufort Gazette is very balanced in national and local coverage and opinion pieces.
We tend to seek out examples of media that support our social and political views, which is actually more of a “reader bias” than a media bias, but with our free press we can always find information from every possible perspective.
Thank you for your commitment to fair and balanced coverage.
Linda Ollis
Beaufort
Beaufort County School District bookkeeping must change
It is interesting that on the final day of the Beaufort County School Superintendent Jeff Moss’s tenure, a story appeared in your newspaper about a school bookkeeper being charged with using a school district credit card to embezzle public funds. A spokesperson for the school district said that bookkeeping is a position of trust, yet the district hired a person who had a prior conviction of check fraud, lied on her employment application, and was not subject to a financial background or credit check. The district states that this is the first time an employee has been accused of this type of violation.
Last July, your newspaper reported that $30 million was charged on school district credit cards with thousands of transactions unaccounted for. The call for a forensic audit fell on the deaf ears of Moss.
Strangely, less than a month ago, an audit was conducted into this matter. The accounting firm found nothing out of the ordinary. Only 262 out of 28,000 transactions were looked into. This farce of an audit looks to me like a coverup allowing Moss to say that the credit card situation was investigated with no wrongdoing found. Hopefully, our next school superintendent will be better.
Donna P. Bryant
Bluffton
Beaufort County: Here’s why we ‘deserve this’
Regarding a recent letter to the editor titled, “What did we do to deserve this?”
Answer:
We have citizens being sued with $200,000 of tax money, and no forced transparency on how our chambers of commerce spend millions of our accommodations tax money. It’s just handed to them with zero oversight. What is going on with this Town Council?
Cathy Hoagland
Hilton Head Island
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